Climate-smart agriculture in practice: insights from smallholder farmers, Timor-Leste and the Philippines, Southeast Asia

Abstract

The climate challenges confronting agriculture are multiple, interconnected and multi-scaled.Agriculture is a source of increasing greenhouse gas emissions, but it is also vulnerable to climate change impacts. Adopting resilient approaches in the agricultural industry can help to contribute to both climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation. Climate-smart agriculture has emerged as a solution to address the multiple challenges of climate change and food security by sustainably increasing productivity, enhancing resilience and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. To date, there is limited scholarly evidence on what constitutes climate-smart agriculture, and how it is framed globally and practiced by smallholder farming communities. This research helps to bridge this gap by analysing the international discourse around climate-smart agriculture, and providing local empirical evidence derived from smallholder farming communities in the Philippines and TimorLeste.At the broad level, this research aims to identify how climate-smart agriculture within communitybased adaptation programs is contributing to the integration of mitigation and adaptation responses to climate change. Drawing from political ecology and climate change (adaptation and mitigation sciences) theories, the research explains how socio-institutional factors -inequality, unequal power relations and social injustice -influence climate-smart agriculture. The theoretical arguments are illustrated with empirical case studies of smallholder farmers and civil society organisations in the two case studies. Using mixed qualitative methods and descriptive analysis of over 150 semistructured interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation, the research examines climate-smart agriculture practices across three broad categories: vulnerability of smallholder farmers (socioeconomic factors), synergistic relationships (adaptation, mitigation and food security) and governance (socio-institutional determinants).This research argues that mitigation and adaptation interventions are climate-smart for smallholder farmers when they directly address local climate risks, support a combination of adaptation, food security and livelihood strategies, and empower at-risk and marginalised populations. Results indicate that climate-smart agriculture in the Philippines and Timor-Leste are characterised and influenced by multiple socio-institutional factors. The increasing burden of loss and damage as a result of extreme climate events subject women to migration, increased discrimination, loss of customary rights to land, resource poverty and food insecurity. In terms of farming practices implemented by smallholder farmers, most adaptation actions were found to have corresponding positive mitigation, food security and livelihood co-benefits. At the community level, climate-smart interventions are highly locationspecific, technically rigorous, involve knowledge-intensive processes, and are influenced by the finance and capacities of local farming com...

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“…Regarding the gender variable, this thesis shows that households headed by men are more likely to adopt water management techniques, similar to the findings of other studies on small farmers (Ardakani et al, 2019;Chandra, 2017). The adoption of organic fertilizers is more common in households headed by females than in households headed by males (Kpadonou et al, 2017).…”

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“…The literature indicates numerous issues regarding the determinants of smallholder farmers' adoption of CSA practices worldwide [5,6,11,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. One of the determinants is access to information, which includes extension institutions, weather forecasting information, and the knowledge and/or capacity of extension workers [16,20,24,25,27].…”

“…The literature indicates numerous issues regarding the determinants of smallholder farmers' adoption of CSA practices worldwide [5,6,11,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. One of the determinants is access to information, which includes extension institutions, weather forecasting information, and the knowledge and/or capacity of extension workers [16,20,24,25,27]. Furthermore, the adoption of CSA practices is hindered by the lack and scarcity of resources such as land, labour, finances, competition for the use of biomass, water, income, and farm inputs [6,[15][16][17][18][23][24][25][26][27]29,30].…”

“…One of the determinants is access to information, which includes extension institutions, weather forecasting information, and the knowledge and/or capacity of extension workers [16,20,24,25,27]. Furthermore, the adoption of CSA practices is hindered by the lack and scarcity of resources such as land, labour, finances, competition for the use of biomass, water, income, and farm inputs [6,[15][16][17][18][23][24][25][26][27]29,30]. Other studies found that access to markets [11], the lack of markets [27], and market information [26] are necessary for smallholder farmers to adopt CSA practices.…”

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